An Analysis On The Limitation Of Academic Freedom

The essence of academy is the seeking for truth and the purpose of it isthe seeking for kindness. The result of academic research can bring benefit tomankind and may also do harm to them. Seeking for kindness should be theultimate goal of academic research in the scientific construction. When thereis a contradiction between seeking for truth and seeking for kindness,researchers should follow the principle of humanistic care in the strong pursuitof scientific knowledge. Harmful research projects should be terminated, thecontroversial scientific research projects must be suspend and the adverseconsequences of scientific research projects to society must be obliterate whilethe one which can bring benefit to mankind must be encouraged. Therfore, theacademic freedom in ethics must be limited and the ultimate purpose ofacademic research is kindness.To begin with, academic freedom is the premise of scientific prosperity.We should do academic research to gain knowledge and not to gain wisdomfor other benefit. The state of “non-restrait” is the highest state of gainingknowledge. Science and technology is the primary productivity force. Scienceis vital to the development of society. If there is no academic freedom, there isno scientific creation. The scientific research may stop and the research anddevelopment of the researchers will be hindered. Too strong socialintervention will strangle the freedom of academy which will inevitably bring destruction to scientific development.Then, absolute academic freedom will lead to academic utilitariantendency, blindness and anthropocentricism. The research result undersuch freedom will bring disastrous situation to the whole human society.The rapid progress of science and technology will bring us welfare as wellas huge risks.At last, science must be beneficial to mankind and scientists shouldtake the social responsibility. Their research behavior should beeffectively controlled and restrained, sounder behavior criterion ofscientists’should be built up and more effective guarantee measures willbe adopted to deal with the limitation of scientific freedom. So it isnecessary to have a serious discussion and analysis on the scientists’socialresponsibility. A correct understanding of the limitation of academicfreedom is the premise of scientific prosperity. As a result, the academicfreedom is limited and should be limited.Under the guidance of materialist dialectics, the thesis adopts theresearch results and methods of multi-disciplines such as science andtechnology ethics, philosophy of science, history of science to analyse andstudy the problem of science freedom by using the literature analysis method,comparative study, daily semantic analysis based on the existing researchresults home and abroad.This thesis tends to illustrate that academic freedom must run underthe favorable conditions of social norms.Otherwise it will violate the laws of social development. The ultimate value judgments in science andtechnology do not depend on a simple concept of“science for science”,but depends on whether science is truth-seeking as well askindness-seeking, whether science which is beneficial to mankind reachesa unity of truth, kindness and beauty.